Dr. Noelle Cutter

Overall, I think lab product reviews are essential for all purchasing decisions. For me, just knowing someone has tried a product, especially if they’re doing research that’s similar to my own, has really helped put my mind at ease. Personally, I always read reviews, whether it’s for clinical lab research or just to buy the best pair of running shoes. I find that reviews are really important and very impactful in my own decision-making process.

They really help clinical researchers such as myself, to make smarter choices, and that’s instrumental in improving products and services that companies are going to offer us. Reviews can serve as a means of collective intelligence, they help to give shape and structure to the wealth of information and products that are out there for us to choose from.

When researchers share their own views and their experiences of what they’ve had in the lab regarding what they’ve purchased, it helps others to make the best decision possible for their own research. I think people read reviews to really guide them in this decision-making process.

In terms of when you are writing a review, you really need to make sure that you offer valuable guidance on the service or product that you’re using. This is going to attest to a company’s reliability, affordability and just how good their product is overall. It’s important because it gives consumers insight into product quality which is so important in the field of clinical research. I think you should make sure to discuss how the product was useful in your specific area of research. So, if you’re using ELISAs to detect antibody response in the coronavirus infection, you need to make sure that you include that as part of your review, so that others who are doing similar research will know that they can use the product for the same reason.

This is one of my favorite questions to answer. I think that scientific discovery is only as good as the communication. The key to accommodating the multiple communication paths is going to begin at your level of familiarity with talking to not only other researchers in the field but also the general public. Scientists doing the work can see more connections themselves when you can organize the data in different ways. Colleagues will be able to more easily replicate your experiments.

Scientific writing can often get clogged up with technical details and confusing jargon. Scientists need to be able to transfer that knowledge with the hopes of reaching people on different levels so that they can understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. When this context is not available, connections are often missed and critical discoveries can remain hidden. That’s not our goal in science. We really need to do a better job in science communication.

In the age of fake news, we really need to do a better job at trusting science again. That’s only going to be achieved if science is communicated clearly, efficiently and contextually. The need arises especially in the event of the current state of the pandemic, where doctors, physicians, clinicians and researchers must provide the public with evidence-based information in a simple and shared way to avoid any misinterpretations and misunderstandings. Better coordination between the medical community, between the governments and the mass media is therefore going to be needed to avoid the spread of disinformation through different channels, limiting the dissemination of fake news and thereby better engagement of the general public to adhere to the correct guidelines, which has been so important given the current state of affairs.